


Love's Labour Found

by starlady



Category: Author RPF, Shakespeare - Fandom
Genre: Crossdressing, Feminism, Gen, Meta, Postmodernism, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-18
Updated: 2003-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 13:43:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlady/pseuds/starlady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My thanks to Kat Sherman, without whose encouraging words <em>Love’s Labour Found</em> would never have been written.</p><p><em>Love’s Labour Found</em> was produced in May 2003 in Philadelphia.</p></blockquote>





	Love's Labour Found

There is something incomplete about Pheron. (Since there _is_ no Pheron, since he exists only as words, their sounds and associated meanings, be certain of it: _I_ have left it out.) My job is, then, in the course of this experiment, to find this incompleteness, to fill it in, to make him whole.—Samuel R. Delany, _Flight from Nevèrÿon_

 

**Dramatis Personae**

Desdemona, _wife to Othello_  
Lady Macbeth, _once Queen of Scotland_  
Ophelia, _beloved of Hamlet_  
Beatrice, _born under a dancing star_  
Rosalind (_as the youth_ Ganymede), _lady of the Forest of Arden_  
William, _a playwright_  
a female Playwright, _young and prolific_  
__Virginia, _a writer, late of Bloomsbury_

Boys may take girls’ parts if desired, as was done in Shakespeare’s time; as has been done lately, girls may take boys’ parts. Rosalind may be played by either an actor or actress. The actor must remember, however, that he is a boy playing a girl playing a boy, not a boy playing a girl.  
__

 

* * *

_[Lights up on a bar or café of some sort. Four women are sitting at a center stage table, playing cards. Other patrons sit at tables stage left and right, talking quietly. In the foreground stage right two men sit at a table conversing; one is older and balding, with a gold earring in his left ear, the other young and fair. The women are wearing Renaissance, or non-modern, garb. Desdemona is dealing. A handkerchief lies on the table beside her. Ophelia wears a necklace of violets.]_

Lady Macbeth: Hit.

Ophelia: Stay.

Desdemona: Beatrice?

Beatrice: I shall stay. D: Anyone else?  
__

_[They shake their heads]_

D: The moment of truth arrives, ladies._ [Laying her cards down]_ Nineteen.

O: _[sighing]_ Seventeen.

B: Twenty.

LM: _[angrily]_ Twenty-two.  
__

_[Beatrice listlessly collects the pot. Stillness]_

LM: _[abruptly]_ Is it me, or does it always happen this way?

D: It certainly seems so. Whenever we meet, it’s always the same game….

O: The same conversation….

B: Like the ocean….In and out, in and out…Life, and then death….  
__

_[L. Macbeth is making wave motions with her arm]_

LM: _[Staring at her arm]_ Violent death.

B: No more or less violent than most others.

O: But…suicide! That is _too_ violent!

D: Well, at least you chose your own end.

O: I was left no choice. No choice but despair.

LM: Nor I.

B: Ah, but we’ll never know, will we, my dear? He denied you your own fourth act! You went from sanity to madness in one fell swoop, no time for despairing, only time for desperation.

LM: Very fell, I assure you. But don’t remind me.

B: You brought it up.

LM: Exercising the speech we were all denied. Not one of us, you realize, had a deathbed soliloquy? Not even a monologue! An aside! We were left as sphinxes, inscrutable….

O: Perforce the rest was silence.

D: A silence vaster than life or death…. Crashing to shore, the wave overwhelmed us all….

B: The Egyptian had a speech. She spoke before they killed her. _[Pensively]_ A very good speech it was, too, as I recall.

O: Before the dramatic pressure forced the asp to her breast.

LM: Leaving only a faithful retainer to speak her epitaph: “Fitting for a princess/Descended of so many royal kings….” She was worth more than all those kings combined, but the Romans didn’t care.

B: Marc Antony cared.

LM: And he died.

B: Plenty of worthy people have done so.  
__

_[Nodded, muttered agreement]_

LM: _[with gallows humor]_ But so have the unworthy. And once they’re dead, who is to say which was which?

D: It’s all so monotonous. Birth marriage children death. You would think there’d be something more. Anything.

LM: The _heroes_ usually have something grander. Those lions of inner life—inner contradiction, more like!—they at least were permitted the reach toward something grander.

B: My dear Lady Macbeth, you too grasped! _Your_ ambition drove your husband to Duncan’s murder!

LM: And I had done it for him, but that he looked like my father as he slept. But don’t you see? Who was my father to me that his likeness should keep me from my ambition? We’ll never know! I didn’t say! And no one cares, either! They care why Macbeth bathed himself in blood, but I am merely the Fury who whipped him to it! I am denied even a name to call myself! Forever I am only his _wife_.

O: You at least have character. _I’m_ just Hamlet’s sylvan girlfriend, the mad, suicidal violet. Bah.

D: Dear old William revealed the human condition, truly. But he did it by doing injury to us.

O: I’m sick of it.

B: And I. Being the genius of one’s play is fine, but even I was denied a final word, a chance to say for myself what I thought of it all—marriage, the weather, what have you. Just one word would have been enough! One! One word to express whatever I felt, and I would have been content.

D: But it’s too late. That word was spoken for you.

O: Birth.

LM: Marriage.

B: Children.

D: Death. The waves are always the same.

B: An eternal dance.

LM: But—there must be something we can do …!

O: Like what?

B: We could find another author….  
__

_[As one, they look stage right to the balding man at the other table. He tugs at his earring but does not look up.]_

D: Another author….There must be one around here who would take us….

O: “Will work for representation.” And we come complete with a prior reputation.

LM: Notoriety, more like. But our stories would be told.

D: We’d be free to be ourselves….

O: Whoever we are.  
__

_[silence]_

B: _[sweeping her chips off the table]_ But don’t you see it’s useless! Will might have written us, but we’re beyond his reach now. We’re beyond anyone’s reach, including our own. We belong to the world, and the world sees us as he wrote us. Even if we did find another author, she wouldn’t be able to write us differently! She couldn’t think of us as anything but the way we are. We’d still be the sphinxes, victims active or passive! The brook and the bed and Benedick would still be waiting at the ends of our paths. It’s too late. It’s been too late since April 23rd, 1563.    
__

_[As she is speaking, lights up stage left on a table at which sit two women. One has a long, pointy nose and dark hair and is dressed in early twentieth century garb. The other, shorter with short brown hair and glasses, could have stepped out of the audience. Their conversation gradually becomes audible.]_

Playwright: I tried, Virginia. Truly I did. But the more I wrote, the more they receded, away from me, into the mist of how they’re perceived, by me, by you, by anyone, from the Bard on forward….

Virginia: The dreadful secret is that we all fail, my dear, from William’s sister down to you and I. And no one will ever even know how we loved it so….  
__

_[Finishing their drinks, they rise and depart as the lights stage left go down.]_

B: _[emptily]_ See? It’s just as I said.

D: You made such an ado about nothing; I wish your words meant nothing now!

LM: And I.

B: But at the heart of it, the bad joke is, they do mean nothing, even now….  
__

_[Pause]_

O: So is that all that’s left us? Suffering and death? Dear old William denied us even the scant comfort of marriage and children….

B: Scant indeed.

Ganymede: _[turning from his table]_ It’s drama, ladies. You can’t expect but to suffer into truth.

D: Such a truth as we learned might have been better left unspoken inside every human heart.

LM: And why must we be the ones who suffer? History is but the tale of our long woe, mostly invisible and unrecorded.

G: _[taking the empty chair at the table]_ History is the tale of the travails of men and women, my lady. Do you think your husband’s story is complete without you? Or that yours could be told without him?

LM: I know some have tried. It’s just that this world has a way of rewarding some and punishing others, usually decided by looks.

O: And even our sufferings were not the worst. Do you remember the nightingale girl? She was handless, tongueless and lifeless by the end of her play.

William: _[to himself, but audible]_ Lavinia.

O: _[continuing]_ And that poor fool, Cordelia, desperate daughter of a mad father…

D: She should have left him, but where would that have left her? Just as bad as her sisters.

B: A choice that is no choice.

G: But don’t you see? William has it so that no man is whole without a woman….

O: Not so! Hamlet needed no one’s love, least of all mine. And let me tell you, sir Ganymede, plenty of men don’t need women, but no woman of William’s is complete without a man!

D: _[abruptly]_ That was what she was trying to do. She and her lover.

LM: She who?

D: Don’t you remember? She was striving for a new world, a world where men and women, Egyptian and Roman, were each reflections of some unity, each partaking of the other, neither dominating…. It would have been beautiful.

B: Everything would have been different.

William: _[aside]_ I would have had a sister.

G: But she failed. Octavian won.

LM: And they both killed themselves.

B: Well, plenty of worthy people have done it.

D: And why continue living when your world is ashes?

LM: Why go to Rome in chains when your fame could be eternal?

G: But that’s it exactly! Don’t you see? If you ladies had lived—if you, my lady Beatrice, hadn’t married—none of you would be you! And neither would William be William! You are all famous because of him, and he is famous because of you! You took yourselves beyond anyone’s reach with each other’s help. Had your fates been otherwise the world would have been different.

D: But now, we’ll be remembered as long as the language lasts.

O: As long as people decide we’re worth seeing performed, or reading about—

LM: Only I set out for fame, and I was repaid in blood! Remembrance is a cold comfort, especially since our fame depends on human whim, as my companions have said. Not, I think, the firmest foundation.

D: Sir Ganymede, you could at least do us the courtesy of honesty. Or should I say, my lady Rosalind?

B, O, LM: _[together]_ Rosalind!

William: Rosalind!  
__

_[Ganymede laughs and removes his cap, releasing long tresses. Rosalind is here.]_

Rosalind: Well met, my lady Desdemona! So clever a wife would have given any man palpitations of the heart, let alone a desperate man on an island soon to be sieged. No wonder you met the end you did.

D: _[angrily]_ That was entirely Iago.

R: And some Othello. For nothing grows but that the seed has fertile soil.

D: Fertilized by Iago! What was in my husband is within all of us. _[subdued]_ And it killed me.

O: We can’t all live in the Forest of Arden, Rosalind.

R: Even I can’t live in the Forest of Arden, Ophelia. And I would be a fool to try.

B: And if there is one thing my lady Rosalind is not—

William: Perhaps the one thing my lady Rosalind is never—

B: It is a fool. Isn’t that right, Rosalind?

R: _[smiling]_ You flatter me, cousin Beatrice. But I fear we are all fools in love. Hence our mutual folly.  
__

_[At Rosalind’s entrance, the mood of the company is changing from bleak to accepting, even blithe. The atmosphere is lightening.]_

B: Indeed, indeed! Now isn’t that a happier thought?

LM: That it was all for love?

O: And wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? D: _[looking around]_ There’s four men around here somewhere—they call themselves insects, it’s very odd—they say that all you need is love….

R: Rather melodically, too.

B: “If music be the food of love…” All: _[smiling]_ “Play on!”

R: _[continuing]_ “…That, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.”

D: Where’s Orsino and his saxophone when you need him?

O: Where’s Viola, for that matter?

R: Shipwrecked again, I expect.

B: Her and that other girl. You know, the one William fell in love with? What was her name again?

LM: _[ironically]_ Lady Viola.

B: Of course.

O: Well, would it really be so bad if it were true? If it was all for love? I know that was so in my case… But, if it were all for love in the end, what would that mean?

D: Do you mean to say…

LM: If each and every one of us had died for love, in one way or another…

B: That would be an idea. Dying for love’s not so bad, is it? Better than dying for nothing.

O: For folly.

D: For a lie.

LM: For nothing, like Cordelia. Or for regret.

B: Yes, love would be better than all those things. _[Pause]_

R: But my dears, you’re wrong! Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love. There must be something else responsible, some other reason.

O: Just when we had nearly our quietus made, Rosalind, and without even a bodkin. Must you always spoil everything?

R: I haven’t spoilt a thing.

D: Oh, hush. You’re always so confident that everything will be well.

R: Well, it always is, isn’t it?  
__

_[They regard her.]_

O: For you maybe. William liked you.

D: Faith is not enough, Ros. You have to get what you want for yourself. Nothing comes to she who waits.

B: But few things come to she who acts.

LM: Oh, don’t let’s rehash the black prince’s drama! I’ve had enough of it. Every night in here, some drunk or another is getting up on his chair and pretending he’s the Prince of Denmark,trapped in Elsinore, reciting that damn soliloquy, and never with the right inflections. Leave him to his own play. He figured out what was what in the end. And I envy him for it.

O: Don’t we all.

D: _[slowly]_ I suppose that’s really the rub of it. Whatever revelation there was to be had from it all, we were never let in on the secret. We were always dead before William got around to revealing it.

B: It’s nothing very great, Desie. Merely something that was buried in every human heart until William made us look in the mirror. What would you learn? That death closes all? That evil goes unpunished? That the good die young? That’s what there is in it.

LM: This, and nothing more.

R: But there _is_ something more, there must be! Or else why bother at all?

O: I don’t know, Rosalind. You yourself said none of it was for love. If it wasn’t for that, then why bother indeed?

D: _[thoughtfully]_ Well, we did bother, so there must have been some reason. We must have put ourselves through all those tribulations for something.

LM: We’ll never know what though. These hands will never be clean.

R: Maybe that’s the point.

B: And you were always such a cheerful soul. But—there is a way to find out.

All: What?

B: _[smiling mischievously]_ We don’t hang around here for just any reason, you know. There’s a method to our madness.

D: Speak, I say! What do you mean?

B: We could ask the man himself.

O: The man himself?

B: Indeed. _[looking across the stage]_ William! Do you have a moment?  
__

_[William jumps, clearly startled by her hail]_

William: A moment? Yes, Beatrice, I do. Several, actually.

B: Then could you come here? You can settle our little dispute.

W: _[a bit vaguely]_ If I can be of any service….

LM: _[briskly]_ Quite a service. Do sit down.    
__

_[William gets up and pulls a chair over to their table, between Beatrice and Rosalind, who scoot over to make room for him.]_

W: What can I do for you, then?

O: We were wondering something.

D: And we thought you could answer it for us.

W: I’ll do my best. What is it you were wondering?

B: Well….

R: We wanted to know why. Why everything. Why, in your plays, everything is as it is…. Why so many died….

O: And what for. We thought it was love, but Rosalind said no, men have died, but not for love….

W: _[Slowly]_ Wherefore, you say? Well, let me see….  
__

_[Pause. Silence. William ponders, but at length, he shakes his head.]_

W: I’m sorry, ladies. It’s no good. I can’t tell you.

LM: Whyever not?

W: I don’t know myself anymore, Lady Macbeth. Don’t you understand? I let you lot do the talking for me. I’m the cipher behind all of you, the shadow waiting behind the curtain while you speak your lines in front of it. I’m not the one who matters. You are. What was it for? Whatever you like. Money, some people will say, others love, and still others will tell you it was something else entirely, something eternal. Why did you have to die? Why did you suffer? Why did everyone suffer? It is what it is; it was what it was. Let it be, ladies. If things had not been as they are, none of us would be here. Let it be.

O: But there must be something! Don’t you remember? How can you have forgotten?

W: It’s dangerous for a playwright to be too obvious, my dear. Obvious tortured the health out of Thomas Kyd, and got Christopher Marlowe murdered in a tavern just like this one. You want to know why? Don’t ask me. Look within yourselves! You must have the answer, if I don’t, because you know what? You’re only bits of me, sliced off and animated into someone else. And you know the scary thing? I’m only the sum of all of you, and all your fellows. You’re the reason I’m remembered, the reason I’m here. Without you I’m nothing.

D: But we’re nothing without you. If we weren’t yours, no one would care for us….

W: Irony, Desdemona. Irony is what it’s called. Best used when only the audience is aware of it, not the characters themselves. But then, no play is perfect.

LM: Nothing is perfect.

W: I suppose. _[pause]_ I’ll leave you to it, then. Ladies—  
__

_[Bowing, he dons his hats and walks offstage, leaving a stunned table behind him.]_

R: Well. You had to ask. And we are left with more questions than answers.

B: Look within ourselves, he said. Look within ourselves….But we have only the eyes he gave us.

O: Maybe they’re enough.

D: So he was just as trapped as we were, really. Maybe even more so. We at least are interpreted differently every so often, but he is fixed, like an insect in amber….

LM: If unknown. Fixed in ambiguity. Like we ourselves….

B: If the reason is within us, it could just as well have been for love, no matter what you say, Ros.

D: _[affectionately]_ You romantic realist, you.

O: After all, Ros, you said that men have died. You didn’t mention women.

R: I meant both.

B: But that’s the trick, isn’t it? It’s not what you said. It’s what I think of what you said.

LM: So if we wanted to know the reason, all we would have to do would be decide what _we_ think of what we said, in our plays. And then we’d know.

O: Blissful certainty.

D: Simple, really. Amazing we never thought of it before.

B: So…shall we go then? Relearn our lines?

R: They were quite good lines, now that you mention it.

O: _[fidgets]_ Well, when you come right down to it, I have to say, I rather prefer…

LM: Not knowing. Me too. Where’s the challenge in knowing exactly where you stand? The only reason we’re still popular is because everyone can argue about us.

D: You’re right. I’d rather stay too. _[pause]_ But the main thing is, we have a choice.

R: _[with irony]_ A choice that is no choice at all.

B: But we’ve made it ourselves.

O: And we’ll take it.  
__

_[Finis]_

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to Kat Sherman, without whose encouraging words _Love’s Labour Found_ would never have been written.
> 
> _Love’s Labour Found_ was produced in May 2003 in Philadelphia.


End file.
